ArgoKnot – Page 54 – A journal of my weaving, spinning, and knitting life

Short Time and Underway…

April 28, 2014 | Leave a Comment

That’s a phrase I hear every morning when we listen to the Cruiseheimer’s net on our sideband radio. Boats on the move to new destinations….some heading north to get above the Florida border before hurricane season starts on June 1….or people headed ahsore for provisions and/or sight seeing.

One week from today I will be winging back to the US for a visit with my older son and his girlfriend at their home on the outskirts of Baltimore for a couple of days. In the meantime, we have a full week of beautiful destinations planned as our final week aboard and as a tour of the Exuma chain for Rob and Kandice.

Before they arrived I tried to finish up on my small tapestry exercise of circles within circles….didn’t quite make it!

The piece will end in the area where the threaded bar is so I’m not too far from the finish line. It’s been a fun project, but I guess I will have to spend some time on it at home. I cannot bring it with me, so it will sail home with Bob.

On our walk to the airport to meet Rob and Kandice, we passed lots of roosters and chickens with their chicks. There were big black roosters and white ones, and lots of colorful chickens. The roosters are very good at avoiding our camera, and the chickens are pretty good too, although they are encumbered by their brood of little chicks following them around. The best shot we could get was the backsides of a retreating family!

A very different kind of trip to the airport than what we normally experience! At the airstrip we sat in a gazebo to await Rob and Kandice’s arrival!

And then there was Rob, waving to us from what should be the co-pilot’s seat! He had a wonderful time sitting next to Chester the pilot. Rob took some amazing shots of the flight and videos on his Go Pro of the flight and the approach to Staniel Cay. He even saw Pandora at anchor as they made their final approach.

The kids have played with the pigs on Big Major’s Spot, and we’ve seen just how quickly little piglets have grown! Bob probably could not pick up that little pink pig anymore! Rob and Bob went snorkeling in Thunderball Grotto at low tide yesterday, and Rob took a lot of video of the fish and a sea turtle that he swam with for a while outside the far end of the grotto.

We’ve seen some wonderful sunsets, some shooting stars, and some amazing clouds…

Today we will have a short sail to Over Yonder Cay. This is a private island, beautiful beyond belief, and entirely self-supporting with their own energy. There are three large windmills on this island….later today we will get a guided tour from the island manager, Ethan, and I’m sure we’ll learn a lot more about how this stunning place operates.

The rest of our final week will include time at Warderick Wells, Compass Cay, and Shroud Cay.

My shawl is on the final repeat of the lace pattern….now what am I going to work on during my flights home? Wondering if it’s still cold enough in Connecticut to wear wool/silk socks…

So Much Water over the Bridge!

April 25, 2014 | 1 Comment

Weeks have passed since my last post….a combination of rough weather and lots of sailing has prevented me from keeping up here. I cannot use my computer when I am seasick, and I’ve been seasick a lot!

But that is not to say that I haven’t had some wonderful times during the past couple of weeks. We have had some great times on shore!

Today we are back in Staniel Cay in order to meet our son Rob and his girlfriend Kandice when they fly here tomorrow afternoon. The weather is finally settled and promises to be springlike for the next few days! …Although at this very moment the dark skies to the southwest are rapidly approaching, and I think we will get quite a violent squall any minute now! During squalls like these we have sometimes seen water spouts….I hope we won’t experience one!

We have lots of plans for things to do with Rob and Kandice, starting with seeing the pigs on Big Major’s Spot and snorkeling in the local grotto, named after the old James Bond movie “Thunderball” where the filming took place. We have not seen Rob and Kandice since early January, so we are really excited for their arrival!

Yesterday we sailed about 50 miles from Rock Sound, Eleuthera, to Pipe Cay in the Exumas. (Perhaps I should mention that just a week earlier I also endured a 70 mile ocean run from Thompson Bay, Long Island, to Rock Sound Eleuthera….go me!) While we were getting under way, Bob heard on the Cruiseheimers net (on sideband radio) that someone caught a big tuna, so he could not resist the temptation to try catching something himself. He put out a line and within an hour or so he had a mahi mahi giving him a good fight. As he got it closer to the boat we could see it was a whopper!

That fish yielded us over 8 lbs of filets! We had our friends Maureen and Bill (from Kalunamoo) over for dinner last night, and we have at least four more meals waiting in the freezer. We will definitely have it for dinner one night while Rob and Kandice are here.

And what a wonderful time we had on Eleuthera! This was our first visit there. Easter weekend was lovely in Rock Sound. We decided to visit the Methodist Church for Easter service, while Bill and Maureen went to the Catholic church….there were numerous other choices as well. As luck would have it, just before the service started Nancy and George from Trumpeter (Nancy taught me to make Bahamian coiled baskets last winter) came and sat next to us. They have attended this church every Easter for several years. The service was very festive, with lots of music, a liturgical dancer and plenty of enthusiasm in the congregation. We estimated that there were over 100 people in the congregation, about 40% white and 60% black. This Methodist Church is one of the oldest churches on the island, and has already celebrated its bicentennial. The sanctuary is deceptively modern, with an elaborate sound system and a power point projector. It was a hoot!

On Easter afternoon we met Bill and Maureen at the local blue hole, right in the center of the town park in Rock Sound, for our Easter dinner picnic. Maureen had baked some of their own frozen mahi mahi for us, along with freshly baked beer bread! This blue hole is quite impressive since it is only a few feet shallower than Dean’s Blue Hole on Long Island, which is the deepest blue hole in the world. And Rock Sound’s blue hole sits in the middle of a lovely park where we could have our picnic right at the edge of the water, in the shade of a big tree. It was a perfect afternoon!

We also rented a car for two days and toured the rest of Eleuthera with Maureen and Bill. We visited the Glass Window on a mild day and were very impressed with the force of the ocean even in calm conditions. Our photo does not show how much force the calm waters have when they hit the tiny isthmus here. It was dramatic! I can only imagine what that surging bit of the Atlantic must have looked like the day it moved the bridge about 12 feet. Yikes!

We drove north to a spot called Preacher’s Cave, a place where some English settlers found refuge after their ship was wrecked on the Devil’s Backbone (back in the late 1600s) at the northeastern side of Eleuthera near what is now Harbour Island. The cave is impressively big, so it’s easy to understand that it provided a wonderful refuge for those weary and distraught settlers.

Along the way on our 90-mile drive north we also stopped at the Queen’s Baths, another spot where the mighty Atlantic surges against the coast into a cave creating lots of foam and bubbles. Can you see Maureen and me picking our way across the far side of the Queen’s Baths?

Walking along these craggy shores is a lot harder than it looks in this photo. Here’s a close up to give an idea of how rough going it is! The rocks are some kind of very sharp limestone….lots of small (and sometimes large!) craters have formed in these rocks so getting a flat purchase for walking is virtually impossible!

The shopping and restaurant options on Eleuthera were quite a bit more civilized than we’ve experienced in the Exumas! We had a lovely lunch two days in a row. The first day we visited Rainbow Inn and sat on their upper deck overlooking Exuma Sound, and the second day we stopped at Tippi’s and sat in an open air dining room that overlooked the pink sand beach and the Atlantic.

And here is a shot of the pink sand beach at Tippi’s.

Eleuthera was so much more civilized than the Exumas that they even have a ‘camauflaged” cell tower. All through the islands we recognize the distinctive red and white towers of the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (Batelco) and anchor nearby these towers whenever we can so that we can have cellular internet, such as now! But Eleuthera has a cell tower camauflaged as palm tree!

So now I am in the final stages of my winter away. I’m not certain now much more work I’ll get done on my various projects. Perhaps my tapestry will not be finished when I leave….sigh… but I do have two pairs of socks finished (one of them being those fun ‘skewed’ socks!), a fair isle sweater knitted up to the armholes waiting for inspiration on how to proceed for the upper body shaping, several small table embroideries from decades back now finished!….and the last project: Boo Knits “Sweet Dreams” shawl that I just started yesterday. Shawl knitting is quite addictive… I often find that I knit the whole thing in one go. I’m into the final lace area already, so I guess I would say this project is hard to put down. I’m using Verdant Gryphon “Mithral” in the colorway “Bathsheba,” which has lovely woodland shades of bronze/evergreen/burgundy that reminds me of fairies! Queen Mab would love this shawl!

We’ll spend the next 10 days with our kids traveling north through the Exumas. We hope to take the kids to Compass Cay to swim with the sharks and see the beautiful beach there, then to Warderick Wells for more swimming and snorkeling in the Exuma Land and Sea Park. Bob has stumbled into a wonderful connection with the manager of Over Yonder Cay, where we may get a private tour ….if it works out I will definitely give details!

By the end of the first weekend in May we must be back in Nassau for the kids and I to meet our flight back to the US. I will stop in Baltimore with Rob and Kandice for a visit at their house and some time with my favorite dog, Bosun! Bob’s crew will arrive the day I fly out with the kids, so he will begin his journey back to the US the slow way.

I am so excited to be headed home for a beautiful spring on the Connecticut River! I hope some of my bulbs will still be blooming, and I hope I have some Danish flag poppies in bloom from the seeds I planted last fall! On my first day home (if I can get one of the cars started!) I will be heading out to my local weaving guild meeting! Lots to look forward to!

30 Words for Wind

April 9, 2014 | 1 Comment

….and some artistic views of it… let’s start with Winslow Homer.

He captures just how I feel at anchor today. Luckily no sharks circling the boat just now, but otherwise these are pretty much the conditions here today.

We are stuck in another cold front with strong westerly winds, a direction that makes it hard to find good protection in this part of the world. We are in Elizabeth Harbor on Great Exuma, but since it is a huge bay there is far too much room for wind and waves to build. We are yanking so hard on our anchor that it’s hard to imagine either the anchor or the bow of the boat surviving this without damage.

I have made references to words for wind almost every time I have talked about sailing. As I’ve said many times, ‘zephyr’ is my favorite wind word, and I’d really rather not sail in anything but a zephyr. We haven’t seen a single one this winter.

One of the first things I learned about words when I began studying them, is that if there is not a word for something, like oak tree, in a language, that’s a sure sign that no oak trees grow where that language is spoken. Duh! And of course the opposite is true! If there are 30 words for wind in a language, you can bet they have a lot of wind. Like the Inuit and words for snow.

I have no idea which language has the most words of wind. I remember hearing that ancient Greek has 30 words for it… maybe that was just a catchy phrase in Greek courses in the 70…but it has stayed with me for four decades.

I am utterly tired of the wind this winter. It’s been spring for three weeks now, but we are still having these winter cold fronts down here with strong winds. Bob just heard from his weather router this morning that there are at least two more weeks of this clocking wind headed our way.

Here is Sarah Swett’s marvelous “The Hut on the Rock, the Sea.”…. look at those calm waters!…..look at that lovely coracle!…..it’s hard for me to imagine a more idyllic time on the water than this. I haven’t experienced a moment like this in so long I cannot remember.

And here is Barbara Heller’s “All the Diamonds.” She’s done a beautiful job rendering the brilliant points of light on water …..again not something I’ve seen in a while since it’s always blowing a gale here.

Best of all, this tapestry by Sarah Swett depicts my idea of a perfect day: my feet firmly planted on dear Mother Earth, admiring the lovely water view….while knitting! What could be better?

It’s inspiring to see what a couple of wonderful artists can do translating lovely moments on the water. I just have to cling to the belief that there might times like this ahead for me.

Into the Final Month

April 4, 2014 | Leave a Comment

We’ve spent the last three days or so sailing, and sailing hard. It’s not much fun when the wind is ahead of the beam, which means we are sailing into it. Pandora goes like a bat out of hell, but heeling a lot, and that means sailing hard on her side. Since this is also our home, it’s not much fun to have all our stuff bashed about hard to one side. We batten things down, and put away as much as we can, but I can still hear all the stuff in the cabinets tumbling around. There is precious little glass onboard, as you can imagine!

The sights are lovely, as you can see, but the wind continues to be challenging. We have spent the past three days with some wonderful friends on board a very comfortable catamaran called Nati. And we’ve just said goodbye to other dear friends on Ariel. That’s life onboard. Unlike living on land, when your house location changes all the time, your friends change too. Luckily, we bump into friends now and then all along the way.

A day spent on Joe’s Sound with our friends from Nati. We walked some beautiful white beaches, dinghied into mangrove flats, and had a lovely dinner of perch from a lake in the Adirondacks that Anne and Dick cooked up for us. How amazing is that? They had a friend visit who brought them frozen perch, and venison that he had killed himself while hunting and fishing in the Adirondacks. What luck for us to get to have some perch!

We are back in Thompson Bay, planning to go ashore shortly for a walk and ending with happy hour and hamburgers at the Long Island Breeze. Tomorrow we have reserved a car and will do a little touring of the southern part of the island, ending the day with dinner at Chez Pierre, a bit north of here, where we had a lovely dinner watching the sun set last year. I have high hopes for an equally great dinner and sunset there tomorrow evening!

As usual, when when the winds are calm I try to weave…. slow, but steady progress on my ‘toyland.’

It is 31 days until I fly home. I wonder what this last month on board will bring…..hopefully some long awaited fair weather and calm seas!

Dry Cleaning, Cruiser Style

April 2, 2014 | Leave a Comment

We have left the Exumas and headed east into the Atlantic to some of the islands we visited last year. We are currently on Long Island, a far cry from the island of the same name we are so familiar with!

Ocean Breeze resort is one of the places where cruisers flock to do their laundry. It’s a pristine little resort, and the laundry room is spotless. You can sit on a deck overlooking Thompson Bay drinking a cold beverage or even having lunch as you do laundry.

Last year, while I waited for my wash, I met Nancy from Trumpeter who took an hour or so to teach me how to make the local basket which is a tightly coiled technique using Silver Queen palm fronds. We have bumped into them again this year! Here! How serendipitous! Nancy makes about 100 baskets each season and delivers them to school children back in the US, when she and her husband George do a program on cultural differences. This year she has made a wedding present basket that is truly amazing. I hope to get a photo, but for now here is a photo from last year when Nancy was patiently instructing me.

So….back to laundry. This is one of those places I count on. Yesterday morning Bob had already taken the sheets off the bed when a little voice told me I should call Ocean Breeze on VHF radio, and when I did I learned that their water maker is not functioning so there is no laundry available! Oh no! That made me realize a few things: first, I have thought that water makers have made life on these islands so much easier. While people still do collect water in cisterns, mostly during the hurricane season, and ration water at all times whether from the water maker or from the cistern, I never thought how fragile it is to rely on these modern conveniences. When mechanical things break down out here it is not so simple to make repairs. So, Ocean Breeze is carefully rationing their water now.

So that brings me to dry cleaning. We have heard of this and have now we’ve experienced it! When cruisers cannot do real laundry they take their sheets and towels and hang them out in the breeze and the sunlight. I imagine that there is some benefit to this…. clean air and bright sunlight must have some cleaning properties. Anyway….this was our only option. Next hope of laundry is either Black Point in the Exumas or Rock Sound on Eluthera. Must get it done before next guests arrive!

When you visits places like this, you have to expect some inconveniences….like resorting to cruiser style dry cleaning.

We have had a little tragedy onboard Pandora. My wonderful little window box, full of very happy plants, fell overboard! You cannot imagine how sad I am about this. Whenever we move location we put the window box in a safe place, usually in the dinghy that is up in its davits. One day, last week we just moved from one side of Elizabeth harbor to the other and we didn’t even give my precious little gems a thought. I was at the wheel, and I didn’t even see them go over. My chives had somehow figured out it was spring and were bursting into bloom. I was looking forward to having the flowers on salads. The geranium was full of happy red flower heads, and the parsley had gotten quite full and delicious. We didn’t realize it had all gone overboard until about an hour after anchoring. Bob took off in the dinghy to see if by chance it was floating in the current. There was a pretty strong current taking it out to sea, and he only found the empty window box. The plants had fallen out and probably sank. I feel just miserable about this. All the islands and cays down here have such a desert climate that my little window box was quite a bright spot in my days. I am so sorry about its salty demise. I don’t even have a recent photo of it, but this is from a month ago or so…

Lastly, I dug out an old sock project that I brought on board. It is the “skew socks” from Knitty Winter 2009 by Lana Holden. I am having a great time finishing up this crazily fun design! The straight sections are basically diagonal knitting , and the shaping of the toe and heel is quite creative! I don’t even know how I would begin to envision this on my own, but I am certainly having a great time following the directions. The heel ended up being a flap that jutted out on only one side of the circular row. After knitting the entire heel flap (which looked nothing like any heel flap I’ve done before!) you put half of the flap on each of two dps and graft them together with a bit of spare yarn. The working yarn ends up just where you need it to be to continue knitting around minus the heel flap that just got grafted together. The graft ends up being a vertical line rather than the typical horizontal, and that is part of skewed-ness of the design.

Five years ago, I posted this photo from the instructions on knitty, and now I am even more smitten by the cute photo and the designer’s sense of humor and love of math!